The Journal of College Access – A Resource for High School Counselors, College Access Practitioners, Counselor Educators, and Researchers

Since the publication of its inaugural issue in 2015, the Journal of College Access (JCA) has published 28 articles: 10 articles describing original research; 6 ‘perspective’ articles written by and/or about influential people, organizations, and access-related issues; 4 literature review articles; 3 book reviews; 3 research report critiques; 1 resource highlight article; and finally 1 best practices article. The Journal really does have something for everyone involved in college access work – from those on the ‘front lines’ in high schools and community organizations to researchers investigating access-related issues and the counselor educators preparing the next generation of school counselors – and everyone is invited to contribute to JCA.

For people interested in reading the peer-reviewed literature related to college access, JCA is somewhat unique as it is open-access – anyone can go to JCA’s website to access it, without needing to go through a university library or have a subscription. This makes it a great place for ‘end users’ to get peer-reviewed information, and for researchers to publish their work all articles are also indexed in ERIC.

As hinted at above, researchers are not the only people who can submit articles – JCA welcomes submissions from anyone who has an idea they would like to share. Have a program you developed you’d like to share? You can do this as a Best Practices submission. Read a book related to college access? Submit your thoughts in a Book Review submission. Read a thought-provoking research report? Submit your thoughts as a Research Report Critique. Write a literature review for a class that you think might be worth sharing? Submit it as a literature review. You’ll find examples of each of these areas already published in JCA – we hope you will not only ready JCA, but contribute!

Dr. Tim Poynton is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and serves as an Editorial Board member for the Journal of College Access. Sophie Schuler is a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Boston.